Orville who?

One of my biggest surprises in France has been difficulty to find products that one just takes for granted in the United States. Oreos, Philadelphia Creme Cheese, sour cream, baking soda, real chocolate chips, fresh refridgerated milk, chile peppers, fresh bagels, and fresh celery and carrot sticks to name a few, but one of the biggest surprises was Microwave Popcorn!

During one of my last trips to the states, I checked out a grocery store and a CVS store to help me recall what I had been missing. Just walking down the aisle with the Microwave Popcorn, one was bombarded with the buttery flavor scent and multitude of brands and options which were astounding. Different flavors, different sizes, different brands and different quantities, to name just a few of the alternatives.

Quite different from my experience here at the local grocery store. The store we go to here is quite large and modern. Codebar scanners for checking yourself out if you have less than 10 items, store coupons, fidelity card - you know what I mean.

Well the first challenge is to find where they might put the microwave popcorn. For some period of time, it was with the "world foods" section with other American food (like pancake mix and all the El Paso products), sandwiched between China and Italy on the global food map. The microwave popcorn was sold in single bag packets with a choice of salt or sugar for flavoring. At some point, the store changed vendors and also decided to place the popcorn with packaged nuts and dried fruits. Alas, still only the two flavors. And I swear, there must be some sort of rationing going on (maybe in response the George W Freedom Fries episode - how is that for a conspiracy theory?), because I could go for weeks and find nothing but empty space where the microwave popcorn packs should be. I sometimes blame this on a bad supply chain software implementation, but maybe it really is something beyond this. The popcorn packs are very generic in look, with instructions in about a dozen different languages. As a frequent user, I know that 2 minutes and 20 seconds is just about the perfect time in the microwave.

The only flavor I will get is the salted version. Somehow sweet popcorn reeks of crackerjacks and disappointed childhood memories of a prize that was always too silly to do anything with but throw away with the empty package. I guess I still kept thinking if I ate enough of it, someday I would find a really nice prize. Unfortunately, that is another one of those lotteries that I never won.

Am having a craving, for some nice salty microwave popcorn, but my stock is running low, so I will have to curb myself today.